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1 Pay Secrecy 1 (2014)

handle is hein.scsl/paysc0001 and id is 1 raw text is: BUREA PAY SECRECY In 2012, women who worked year-round, full-time earned seventy-seven cents (77¢) for every dollar their male counterparts earned.i Women's median earnings are lower than men's in nearly all occupations, whether they work in occupations predominantly held by women, occupations predominantly held by men, or occupations with a more even composition of men and women.ii Pay secrecy policies serve to perpetuate these disparities. In 2010, nearly half of all workers nationally reported that they were either contractually forbidden or strongly discouraged from discussing their pay with their colleagues, according to results from a 2010 Institute for Women's Policy Research/Rockefeller Survey of Economic Security.iii Prohibiting or discouraging any discussion of wages in the workplace is far more widespread in the private than in the public sector.iv In this survey, 23.1 percent of private sector workers reported that discussion of wages and salaries was formally prohibited and an additional 38.1 percent reported that such discussion was discouraged by managers.v On April 8, 2014, President Barack Obama issued an executive order prohibiting Federal contractors, subcontractors and federally assisted construction contractors from discharging or in any other manner discriminating against any employee or applicant for employment because the employee or applicant inquired about, discussed, or disclosed his or her compensation to another employee or applicant. The Administration has also endorsed the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would, in part, prohibit employer retaliation against an employee for inquiring about, discussing, or disclosing his or her wages or those of another employee in response to a complaint or charge, or in furtherance of a sex discrimination investigation, proceeding, hearing, or action, or an investigation conducted by the employer. i Facts for Features: Women's History Month: March 2014, U.S. Bureau of the Census, February 11, 2014. ii Pay Secrecy and Wage Discrimination, Institute for Women's Policy Research, June 2011. iii ID iv ID v ID Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) protects non-supervisory employees who are covered by the Act from employer retaliation when they discuss their wages or working conditions with their colleagues as part of a concerted activity to improve them, even if there is no union or other formal organization involved in the effort. These employee rights are enforced by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Nevertheless, the NLRA does not address all situations where employers prohibit or discourage employees from discussing their pay with their colleaguesvi W~lty The 1980s saw the introduction of the first two state laws to address employer wage secrecy policies. In 1982, Michigan enacted a law which prohibited employers from doing any of the following: require as a condition of employment non-disclosure by an employee of his or her wages; require an employee to sign a waiver or other document which purports to deny an employee the right to disclose his or her wages; and discharge, formally discipline, or otherwise discriminate against an employee for job advancement on the basis of having disclosed his or her wages. In 1985, California enacted a similar law. Between 2000 and 2014 seven additional states--Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Vermont--enacted pay secrecy laws. The language of the state laws is attached. vi Combating Punitive Pay Secrecy Policies, National Women's Law Center, April 2012.

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